Louisville shuts down high-scoring Seminoles in 83-69 win

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A majority of this Louisville women's basketball season has come back to head coach Jeff Walz wanting to see his team take meaningful steps forward on the defensive end of the floor.

The Cardinals may have finally started to fully put it together more on defense against the nation's top-scoring team in No. 23 Florida State, shutting down the Seminoles in an 83-69 road victory. The 69 points mark a season low for FSU, who also shot a season-worst 15% from three-point range.

"We're getting better," Walz said. "That's your goal at this time of the year, is to keep getting better. For the most part, if we would've stopped fouling, we did a remarkable job."

Two key Cards found themselves in foul trouble. Arguably the team's best and most reliable defender in Ja'Leah Williams and Nyla Harris, who scored 14 points and grabbed 9 rebounds, each finished with four fouls. Three other players in Imari Berry, Olivia Cochran and Elif Istanbulluoglu each tallied three.

But as a team, Louisville did not flinch. The defensive effort intensified to stifle Seminole shots and see the home team hit just 38% from the field. That ties the third-worst shooting performance of the year for a squad who came into Thursday night averaging 92 points per game.

Walz credited Berry for her defensive improvement as well as the strides she has made with her conditioning, helping her play 22 minutes. He also lauded his bench for stepping up to respond to the foul situation, as the reserves scored 23 points and helped ensure a dangerous offensive team never got hot.

"We had layers to try and stop (Ta'Niya) Latson and (O'Mariah) Gordon," Walz said. "We knew you can't guard them one on one. It's impossible. So, when she would get by one person, we had someone else there. And that's what we did tonight as well as we have all year."

Latson, who entered this contest as the country's top scorer at 26 points per game, still was able to finish with 29 points. Louisville was able to turn her over four times and took advantage of Florida State's 11 giveaways as a whole, scoring 22 points off of them. Gordon chipped in 15, but just one other Seminole in Makayla Timpson finished in double figures, scoring 10 points.

"I thought we made the ones shoot it that we wanted to have shoot it because we knew what Latson and Gordon can do," Walz said. "They're two of the best guards in our league, for sure."

His backcourt duo of Tajianna Roberts and Jayda Curry continue to pace this team offensively. Both dropped 17 points, with Roberts adding 10 rebounds and Curry distributing 6 assists. They combined to shoot 50% from the field and 55% from three.

"It's been great. That's what we need," Walz said. "We're going to continue to need the consistency from those two."

With just four games remaining, his team could be finding some consistency at a crucial point of this campaign. Louisville is now 11-3 in ACC play and 9-2 on the road. The Cardinals also have two wins over ranked opponents in their past three games.

"I'm hoping we can continue to grow," Walz said. "We have to get back in the gym. We have to keep working. We can't be satisfied with the performance we had tonight and think, 'Hey, okay, now we're good. We don't have to work at it.' If we can continue to just improve a little bit each day like we have been, then this team is going to be fun to watch."

The Cardinals now get a week before traveling to face another ranked conference foe in No. 13 Duke.

"We need the break because we've got about five or six that are dealing with that flu bug and all that other crap that's been going around," Walz said. "I was really proud of them because we had a few of them that were not feeling well at all. We had an abbreviated shootaround today. We normally will have two in a room. We got them individual rooms to try to keep them spread out.

"But I was just so impressed with the effort they gave, because as we as we told them, 'You can be sick before practice, you can't be sick at practice. You can be sick before the game, you can't be sick at the game. You can be sick after the game.' And they showed that toughness that we've been looking for because not one of them looked like, 'Oh my God. They're not feeling well.' And you can see it on their face at every dead ball, every timeout. They kept finding more."